Win7 theme for ubuntu versions prior to 11.10

Installing the Win7 Theme

This will download a script file that will be used later to tell your computer what files to download to complete the Win7 theme packages install. Once finished, a window will tell you that the installation will start now so just press OK.

Press OK, then back in the terminal enter:

setup-win7-theme

This command will setup Win7 theme and your computer will start transforming into windows style immediately. Wait for a few seconds and you will see a window asking you to logout so logout and log in again.

extract icons/fonts/background

final tweaks

Using System Tools - System Settings - Appearance, click the "+" button and navigate to /usr/share/backgrounds and double click win7-wallpaper.jpg. Select this wallpaper and the background should update

launch Ubuntu-Tweak and click on Tweaks - Fonts

change the default font to be Segoe size 9

Click on Tweaks - Theme

change the Gtk theme to Raleigh

change the Icon theme to win7-icons

Click on Tweaks - Desktop Icon Settings

check (tick) each of the icon options under Show Desktop Icons

Finally logout and login.

Note - if the emerald decorator is not the glassy appearance you would expect then compiz is not running. Either run compiz --replace in a terminal or add this command as a Startup Application.

Windows 7 Theme with XFCE

It’s not easy to configure the default Unity desktop’s left Launcher, so I used the xfce desktop.

Install Xfce Desktop Environment:

Hit Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal window, copy and paste following command and hit run to install Xfce:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

Once installed, log out and select “Xubuntu session” to log in again.

Customize Xubuntu session

The Xubuntu session has a top-panel and dock like panel at bottom.

First get rid of the top-panel by right-click on it -> Panel -> Panel Preferences.

Then click the Red minus button to remove it:.

In previous window, use the drop-down box in the panel configuration window to select the other panel. Uncheck the ‘Automatically show and hide the panel’ option and check the ‘Automatically increase the length’ option.

Now you should have a single panel across that bottom of your screen. Under Items tab, remove items you don’t want and add items you do want, and reorder them as you see fit. For a Windows 7-style taskbar, try using these items in the following order:

You can also change the applications menu’s icon and make it use a Windows 7-style start orb. First, find a Windows 7 start orb image on Google Images, but make sure you get a transparent PNG image. Once you’ve found a good image, right-click the Applications menu button, select Properties, and use the Icon button to select your start orb.

To make your panel look more like Windows 7’s panel, right-click it, point to Panel, and select Panel Preferences. On the Appearance tab, select Background image and browse to the \usr\share\themes\Win2-7-theme\gtk-2.0\Panel\ directory on your computer. Select a background image like Panel_Win2-7Basic800.png. The theme pack we installed includes a variety of panel backgrounds, so feel free to experiment.

Very good stuff. However, switching back to Unity is a bit trickier here as you have to log out and log in again, which has a less big impact then just selecting a theme out of a menu I think.
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Jop V.May 15 '13 at 16:28

Sorry for the delay, just did about 2 weeks trying to change a lot of stuff in Unity to be able to do this. Finally thought "ok let's see that idea about xfce". Took me 3 minutes to get xfce to look like Windows 7. So, with little time on my hand before the event and needing this, I went with your answer. Thanks for ubuntuguide.
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Luis Alvarado♦Jun 3 '13 at 1:41

Windows 7 Theme with Cinnamon

Yes its possible, not with unity but with cinnamon.

Unity works too, but you have to know, that only all window elements are win 7 like, and the top panel will have only win7 like gradients. If you look at this screenshot ( fro 12.10 but 13.04 looks similar) you would understand what i mean:

I recommend you to install the ambiancew7 theme (available on sourceforge net)
I'm not able to write an installer script, so you have to install it on your own.